Bucky Relaxing at Burning Man

Places to go, people to see, working on it.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Monday Monday

Feels like the weekend because MyLarry is home. Yesterday was errands in the sleet and muck, today he ran out to get the oil changed in the trailblazer, but other than that, we're lounging. Fire in the fireplace, snuggles and canoodling on the couch. Gorking on chocolate-banana cream pie, drinking the wretched Blue Hawaiian Boone's Farm I was given. Yeah, I know. I did do some work on the dollhouse, mostly trim pieces and gingerbread, nothing amazing.

The white coveralls arrived, I can begin disassembly in order to make a pattern for the Furlow outfit. That's a lot of gathered shiny grey fabric, orange piping and dark blue polar fleece to assemble.

No bites on the books, they're still available. I'll bookcross them if no one wants them.

To begin explaining my willingness to gift, here are two of the ten principles of Burning Man:

GiftingBurning Man is devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.

DecommodificationIn order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.

So, just as in a family, you do for others, you give to others, as you would to family members. No expectations of anything in return. It feels wonderful although it is not necessarily charity. Oprah is a day late and a dollar short.

5 comments:

I hope you're joking, burners tend to shun mainstream media and coverage. Oprah would be welcome to attend, but she'd have one heck of a time getting permits for her cameras. The Discovery channel did a special, and that caused a lot of hate and discontent.

No, that's even worse. One of the Burning Man mantas is "no spectators." So if a burner happens to talk about the event, that's one thing, I talk about it all the time. But going to the event just to tell people who will never go all about it, well, that's not very cool.

Of course, the worst was the girls gone wild type of guy who went and took videos without asking and sold the tapes. The B-Man lawyers went after him big time. Yeah, the lawyers are volunteers too!